Yesterday, Edward Adams was an X-File, but tomorrow he might be the critical
link between the toxic plumes rising recklessly from U.S. Army installations
in the war zone and the growing number of veterans crippled by unexplained
nerve, heart, and respiratory damage back home.

That’s because unlike any other known case, according to advocates, Adams
was recently told by a board of military doctors at Tripler Army Medical Center
in Hawaii that his health anomalies – including the appearance of countless
holes or "cysts" riddling the tissue around his lungs and an aorta
that has shrunk to half its normal size in three months – "probably is
related to the exposure to burn pits in Iraq."

This is coming at a time when the Pentagon has so far maintained there are
"no significant short or long-term health risks" from the massive
burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan, which incinerate, in open air, everything
from medical waste to plastics, dining hall trash, rubber, lithium batteries,
petroleum products, and hardware, causing a noxious, jet-black plume and huge
clouds over the area.

Adams, 33, went into the Army just five years ago a healthy, athletic young
man. Six months into his 15-month deployment to Iraq (his first and only one),
he was getting by like an out of shape middle-aged couch potato. He told Antiwar.com
in a recent interview that his breathing "just got worse and worse. I
would run a quarter mile and I was just wasted. I was just done."

Describing the smell from the ominous pit at Camp Speicher where he was stationed
as "just horrendous," he said he wasn’t the only one experiencing
problems in his unit, but their queries about a possible connection to the
black dragon went unanswered, even hastily dismissed, by base doctors. It wasn’t
until doctors at Tripler Hospital began looking into his case that the grim
consequences began to emerge.

After an MRI
was scheduled to determine what exactly was causing Adams’ breathing problems,
which got worse, not better, after returning home, his doctors called him immediately.
"They told me my lungs were filled with hundreds of tiny holes,"
Adams said. "It looked completely different from anything they’ve
ever seen before."

"So that sucked."

After Adams was diagnosed with what doctors now call "interstitial lung
disease," a CAT scan revealed that his abdominal aorta – one of the five
major blood lines pumping to and from his heart – had reduced in size by half
from the time of the MRI, about three months before. Doctors called it "aortal
stenosis of undetermined etiology" and told him they "don’t know
if you have one year or 50 years to live." Basically, "cross your
fingers that it don’t get any worse," Adams recalled.

He was in the process of getting his medical discharge from the Army in June.
"Right there, in black and white," he said, referring to the addendum
to his medical board records, which were shared with Antiwar.com, "it
says that my condition was caused by contamination from the burn pits."

This diagnosis challenges the prevailing
view [.pdf] at the Pentagon, based on test samples taken from and around
the pits from 2004-2006, that declares there to be no short- or long-term health
risks and no elevated cancer risks to personnel living around the pits. This
study was supposed to subvert a damning 2006 Air Force-led analysis that suggested
the burn pit site at Joint Base Balad in Iraq (which, at its peak, burned
270 tons of waste a day) was the "worst environmental site" investigators
had ever encountered.

“It is amazing that the burn pit has been able to operate without restrictions
over the past few years without significant engineering controls being put
into place,” said chief investigator Lt. Col. Darrin L. Curtis, USAF, in his
Dec.
2006 report [.pdf].

Members of Congress have been pressuring the Department of Defense (DOD) to
release the raw data from its own study, but so far it has remained classified.

At this point, the growing number of veterans who are speaking out about their
symptoms and making the connection to the ever burning refuse – some even recall
amputated limbs being toss into the pits – are much more inclined to believe
the earlier Air Force study and are starting to think the DOD deliberately
ignored warning signs from the start.

"They knew these problems existed, and they ignored [them]. They could
have been more responsible, from what I’ve seen," said Michael Maynard,
49, whose nerve damage is so bad he can no longer walk without the aid of the
special braces the Veterans Administration recently supplied to him. Without
those, this former runner and Fed-Ex employee requires a wheelchair.

"A lot of us complained while we were there in Iraq of the problems we
would notice … our lungs and our throats were just burning and it felt like
something was crawling all over our skin," charged Maynard, who was deployed
with the Indiana National Guard for nearly a year in March 2004. It was during
his time at the giant Camp Taji outside of Baghdad, where he said he and others
approached the chain of command about the "thick noxious cloud" hovering
above (and of which he can supply photographs). "The Army came back to
us and said, no, it’s fine, we’ve tested it and the levels came back normal,
and we just had to take their word for it."

Maynard told Antiwar.com that his doctors were also "scratching their
heads" over the rapid deterioration of his legs when he arrived home.
He believes "they basically threw me out the door" and "sat
on my paperwork" from the medical board until his discharge came through.
"Then they said, ‘You’re out, you’re the VA’s problem now.’"

While Maynard, a married father of four who was forced to quit his job when
his legs gave out, is receiving nearly 100-percent disability benefits, the
VA won’t make the connection between his condition (which also includes heart
problems) and toxic contamination from the burn pits.

"The VA doctors aren’t saying anything. When I ask them how this happened
to me they say they don’t know. I don’t know if they really don’t know or just
don’t want to know," said Maynard, who does not regret his service but
how he was treated afterward.

He believes that the Roudebush VA Medical Center in Indianapolis, the major
VA hub in Indiana, is already overwhelmed and stands to get worse as more veterans
like himself seek out care. "The number of service members coming back
sick and injured from Iraq and Afghanistan – plus the veterans from the other
wars – it’s just inundated everyday, it’s just a huge crowd of people. You
got to get there an hour or so early just to get a parking spot."

New VA Secretary Eric Shinseki said
in March the VA is already studying veterans experiencing chronic health
problems and also pledged to work with the DOD to obtain data relevant to establishing
possible correlations between toxic exposure and reported health effects.

But the military’s acknowledgment of harmful toxic contamination in-theater
would no doubt trigger an avalanche of claims upon the DOD and VA medical and
benefits systems. It could result in an official presumption that the symptoms
shared by these soldiers were service-connected, so veterans would not have
to fight for disability or priority health benefits, said Tom Tarantino, a
veteran and policy expert with the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Association.
"It took 40 years for them to get a presumptive rating for illnesses relating
to Agent Orange,"
he noted.

Maybe that’s why advocates are readying for the possibility the Pentagon will
oppose legislation introduced by U.S. Reps. Tim Bishop (D-N.Y.) and Carol Shea-Porter
(D-N.H.) that would require the secretary of defense to establish a "registry"
to determine the toxicity levels and potential health hazards of each burn
pit site in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002. It would not only track everyone
who may have been physically impacted, but also conduct outreach to affected
individuals. It would also limit the use of open-air burn pits in the future.

More recently, Bishop and Shea-Porter helped to attach an amendment to the
fiscal year 2010 National Defense Authorization Act that would restrict the
use of burn pits in the war zone to 12-month periods. It also requires the
secretary of defense to immediately begin a report on the "health and
environmental compliance standards" for solid waste disposal in-theater
and to identify existing surveillance systems to track exposures.

The defense authorization bill cleared the House on Thursday. A similar amendment
could be attached on the Senate side. If not, advocates hope the House language
will survive conference.

Bishop said in June that their efforts were the result of "disturbing
reports … coming to light every day" from individuals about the burn pits
and "the toll they are taking." He started the Burn
Action Center online to encourage individuals to share their stories and
health questions. As of this writing, there have been 51 separate testimonies.

According to officials at the Pentagon, the DOD has a policy not to comment
on pending legislation.

Meanwhile, at the Disabled American Veterans office, there have been more
than 400 inquiries from vets with moderate to severe symptoms of contamination,
according to associate national legislative director Kerry Baker. Of those,
there are 80 with newly diagnosed cancer. In March, Baker said 16 individuals
in the database have since died.

"If that rate holds, it would be astronomical," he said. "We
hope we’re wrong, but we think this is just the tip of the iceberg."

Unfortunately, the military has typically lingered on the wrong side of the
truth when it comes to ill veterans, Baker added. "They have historically
fought it and denied it and acted like there is no reason for concern, right
up until the last Gulf War," he said, noting the ongoing struggle of vets
suffering from symptoms now
collectively known as Gulf War Illness.

In recent reports, Pentagon officials have insisted they reduced the open-air
burning by 50 percent by installing incinerators at Balad. But sources who
spoke to Antiwar.com say some 24 incinerators were supposed to go online in
Iraq and Afghanistan, but as of today, only a few are up and running. "They
are just starting to phase this in," said Tarantino. "That’s the
fix. Burn pits are a field expedient measure, usually for a little while; it’s
not supposed to be a permanent solution."

The U.S. was not supposed to be in a permanent state of war overseas, either,
but apparently it is. So no one really knows the environmental and health effects
from the prolonged spewing of this poisonous brew into the air.

"Iraq is a toxic waste dump, and I believe we have done a lot to cause
that," said Maynard, who laments his loss of independence and his inability
to "throw a ball and to roughhouse" with his kids.

"There is going to be a lot more people coming home sick, guaranteed."

So far, the Pentagon isn’t saying much publicly. But maybe the case of "X-File"
Edward Adams, with his hole-ridden lung tissue and shrinking aorta, might force
it into action.

Correction: This article originally referred to “Joint Base Balad in Afghanistan.” Balad is in Iraq.

210610 Responseshttp%3A%2F%2Foriginal.antiwar.com%2Fvlahos%2F2009%2F06%2F29%2Fx-file-vet%2F%27X-File%27+Vet+May+Be+Link+to+Burn-Pit+Truth2009-06-30+04%3A00%3A34Kelley+B.+Vlahoshttp%3A%2F%2Foriginal.antiwar.com%2F%3Fp%3D2106 to “‘X-File’ Vet May Be Link to Burn-Pit Truth”

That one-two punch is a real knockout, Kelley! No use in slacking with the words. I say that when someone knowingly and willfully commits a serious wrong, there should be no easy way out. My gratitude to you is tremendous due to your thoughtful journalism. At the present, my health is much worse – my respiratory seems to be deteriorating further- I cough up anything and everything off and on all day, everyday. The nightly sleep apnea is just frightening to me – I stop breathing as much as 60 times an hour. That amounts to a steadily growing number of dying/dead brain cells – which fully explains why I feel "sickly" so often, with nausea as a tag-along. Our local medical communities abandoned us long ago when they received their "marching orders" on what diagnosis they were not allowed to make. So few of us have the proper noun tagged on our conditions. My short-term memory is fast fading away. After a 14-month deployment and burn pits exposures (Balad and Al-Asad Air Bases), my main concern remains that the truth is finally forced to the front.__Kathy A Vines, SSG (Retired)__

And yet…there is no indication that the 'burn pit' has been turned off or that the US military has hired competent waste management people to come up with an acceptable health and environment solution. Here is a real toxic issue for the President to deal with and there he is posturing and gesticulating over harmless Carbon Dioxide in an attempt to fleece the American public with 'Cap and Trade' taxes to finance a global government. Hey, who elected Obama so he can dissolve the Unites States into a World Government anyway?

It seems the United States went in to rid the region of WMDs that were not there, then created the weapons of mass destruction in the form of toxic gases, to which our own soldiers were exposed. When we add all the costs and casualties from these toxic exposures this will be one of the costliest wars in American history.

The comment that Iraq has been turned into a toxic waste dump is an understatement–It is a dumping ground having global impact. DU weapons and their remains on the ground and in the air. The sea of sewage that is growing and visible from satellite imaging. All who have served and now serving in Afghanistan and Iraq are coming back sick and the military keeps denying there is a health problem. This last is typical of the military and all WH Administrations who have sent our men and women to wars. They want the troops but do not want the responsibility for the damage caused by doing their fighting. Issues about Vietnam are not resolved. The Gulf War Syndrome still under study. This will drag out for decades with little resolution as the Vets get sicker and die. This is the sad truth.

[…] Take the issue of soldiers coming home with chronic health problems allegedly caused by the toxic open-air burn pits in theater. One look at the online discussion boards and it’s clear something over there went awry. Vets are […]

It's unfortunate that articles concerning the Burn Pit in at Balad only discuss Vets. There are and were a lot of contractors there that will have no recourse regarding damages from this particular Burn Pit. I was there in 2005/2005 for 15 months and at that time there were thousands of contractors, citizens of the U.S., Phillipinis, Afghanistan, and many other countries to include Iraq that breathed this black smelly crap on a daily basis.

Not all of us worked for Blackwater, but instead were truck drivers, carpenters, electricians, food suppliers/kitchen workers, IT professionals, just about eveything a small city needs to function. Odds are we will have no recourse whatsoever.

Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, a Washington, D.C.-based freelance writer, is a longtime
political reporter for FoxNews.com and
a contributing editor at The American Conservative.
She is also a Washington correspondent for Homeland Security Today magazine. Her Twitter account is @KelleyBVlahos.